The Things We Knew
by Jamie Legend
Summary: Hanji watched him fall in love. She watched him fall in love with someone who wasn't her. / Don't we all love one sided love? Rated T due to slurrs. /


People say we learn something every day.

Even behind walls that kept everyone from exploring the world, people still learnt something. Especially those in the Survey Cops.

For Levi, he learnt how to take commands. Stay there, they would say. Do that, they would say. Obey that person. Listen to what they have to say.

Hanji learnt everything she could.

As the time passed, after every expedition, Levi shared what he learned with Hanji. Sometimes he'd tell her about what kind of flowers he saw that he didn't see before. Sometimes he'd tell her how he found out that kicking a subordinate isn't allowed. Sometimes he'd tell her about how he thought that some rules were absolutely ridiculous and he didn't like them. Not one bit.

"What rules?" Hanji asked him as they went down the hallway, carrying the papers they were asked to hand in.

Levi didn't respond as he kept his eyes straight forward to the poorly lit hallway. "You're prying." He scolded her, but even his heart wasn't in it. Hanji noticed that for the first time ever, she saw how distant he looked, like he was somewhere else.

With someone else. And it did make her slightly jealous. Just slightly.

Hanji was good at reading Levi's expressions. They had survived the longest together, after all. She saw many of those expressions of his. His anger. His laugh. His grief. His jealousy.

One thing she always yearned to see was his love.

But Hanji watched Levi as he learnt something new every moment he spent with the girl who was shorter than her. Hanji watched her Levi, _her_Levi, learn things about a girl with softer hair than hers. Hanji watched Levi show her something he had never showed to her.

His love.

She didn't know what that little girl had that she didn't. Was Petra more feminine than her? Was it because Petra was shorter than him? Was it because Petra was prettier than her?

So Hanji spent every single day wondering, thinking of an experiment that would tell her why Petra was better than her.

She couldn't think of one.

So she watched her Levi steal a glance with Petra during meetings. She watched them hold hands at the back of the group, just for a tiny second. She saw them kissing behind a barn, she saw how Petra pressed the length of her smaller body to his, and how Levi pressed her closer, as if he was trying to make them one.

Hanji still didn't understand what Petra had that she didn't. Of course, she could never ask anyone. It would be too suspicious after all. And she didn't want to get Petra or Levi into trouble, if the word got out that they were having an affair.

Hanji saw Levi's satisfied expression during one expedition outside. He had found something, something round and golden. She noticed it around Petra's neck, dangling on a thin string as she hid it under her clothes after they got back from the expedition.

Hanji saw Levi's happiness, the happiness that she wanted to be the cause of. Every time she saw them walking together, she saw how he would slack, just a tiny bit. She saw how laid back he was around her, how happy he was… And he had never been like that with her.

Hanji saw Levi's tiny touches to Petra's hands, her back, her hair. When nobody was looking Levi and Petra were together: Hanji knew that.

She never asked Levi about it.

Levi told her about it one night, one night when Hanji saw his drunk face for the first time.

"I fuckin' loved 'er." He slurred, his words almost sticky from the alcohol that had washed his throat just a little while ago.

"I loved 'er so fuckin' much, Hanji.."

He was intoxicated, he really was. She had never seen him _this_drunk. Sure, Levi drank from time to time, but never this much. Never this openly with someone. Never had he cried over something so bitterly. Not even when his friends had died, his comrades…

Levi cried over Petra's death more than he had ever cried over anything in his life. Hanji wasn't aware that this assumption was actually true, however. She simply based it on the fact she only saw grief, and utter, agonising, mind shattering pain in Levi's eyes.

And for the rest of their lives, that was all she saw in his eyes.


End file.
